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18 Carriers Sign Up for Firefox OS Phones

Posted by Soulskill on from the attacking-the-market-where-it's-weak dept.

Several readers sent word of a Mozilla announcement that 18 carriers have committed to launching phones running Firefox OS. The carriers are primarily from markets in South America and Europe. They include Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, and Sprint. The devices running Firefox OS will be made by LG, ZTE, Huawei, and Alcatel, and all will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. The new mobile operating system is built to allow HTML5 apps to run directly on the device, a solution Mozilla thinks will give it an edge when playing catch-up to all the software available for Android and iOS devices. "Developers are busy and don't have time to learn a new programming language. We believe that the only remaining eco-system is the web and there are more developers for the web than for any other platform in the world," said Jay Sullivan. According to Reuters, "Mozilla will initially look to compete in so-called 'emerging economies' in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia, where many people still use older phone models and have yet to upgrade to more expensive smartphones that feature touchscreens and high-speed Internet connections."

2 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Why is there so much interest in Firefox OS ? by obarthelemy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unless this is baseless hype, but still, I'm seeing a lot about this one OS.

    I understand operators not wanting to be beholden to an iOS-Android duopoly, but why pick Firefox as the 3rd player ? Are there no other reasonnably OSS, reasonably good, more proven mobile OSes ? MS, RIM, Bada are proprietary, but what about Meego, Tizen, even Ubuntu ? Why not just fork Android ?

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    1. Re:Why is there so much interest in Firefox OS ? by pesho · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Runs on cheap hardware, the OS is offered for free and somebody else takes care of developing the ecosystem with no strings attached. So if you are a carrier you can offer a "good enough" smart phone for the price of a feature phone. I bet it will be an instant success in developing countries markets and as a first phone for kids in developed countries (hence the Sprint and DT interest in it). The only serious competition it can face is from Android. It will be interesting to see if Google will bother maintaining android codebase that can run on low end phones or just pay to be the default search engine on the Firefox phones and make money on ads and clicks.